[ANNOUNCE] London Perl Workshop: Newsletter 4

Hello all,
If you are on a general mailing list please don't ignore this just
because it says Perl in the title , this is a free and open event for
the technical community so you may wish to consider attending merely to
expand your breadth of knowledge...
Welcome all to the fourth Newsletter for the London Perl Workshop 2011
(the United Kingdom's Perl Workshop - http://shadowc.at/pvDXop),
hopefully by now you have registered for this event
(http://shadowc.at/oqPG7h), added it to Lanyrd
(http://shadowc.at/nhq3kN), liked the Facebook page
(http://shadowc.at/pMuOiL) and been avidly watching the news pages
(http://shadowc.at/pTjWfX) and following me on twitter
(http://shadowc.at/qQqxhX)...
The workshop will be held at the University of Westminster's Cavendish
Campus on Saturday 12th November 2011.
Oh, well...go and do all those things, but before you rush gleefully
away take a look at what's in this newsletter.
1. Training Numbers
2. Food and Drink
3. Mentor T-Shirts
4. Looking for developers/graduates, placements and internships
5. Volunteering on the day
6. New to Perl
1. Training Numbers
The schedule for the training sessions is now live at:
http://shadowc.at/nRB3Xd, I would once again remind people that the
mentors themselves will have final say on the number of people for each
training session. If the trainers could set a maximum in their abstract
and advise me that would be fantastic. On the day we will be checking to
make sure you are not over-crowding the sessions and we will refuse/turf
people out if the trainer asks or seems over-whelmed. These sessions can
only work if the trainers themselves are able to convey the subject to
their attendees.
2. Food and Drink
Once again, and thanks to the overwhelming generosity of our sponsors,
we will be having sponsored coffee and cake in the morning, a buffet at
both the lunch and the evening social sessions and 'n' rounds of beer in
the evening to whet ones appetite. I would like to thank all the food,
drink and beer sponsors for making this possible.
3. Mentor T-Shirts
DuckDuckGo have offered a free t-shirt to any mentor/presenter (and we
can probably squeeze some for the volunteers on Registration etc.) who
will wear it during their talk on the day of the conference, one each
not one between all of us. Please let me know if you would like to take
them up on this offer and state your size before 2nd November, thanks.
4. Looking for developers/graduates, placements and internships?
If you work for a company, or know of a company that is hiring
developers at this time please get them in touch with me as they may be
allowed to attend, distribute leaflets and talk to people. There are
however some caveats so I must speak with them beforehand (we will not
be allowing recruitment agencies unless they sponsor - these must be
legitimate companies) to ensure that the best experience can be achieved.
If there are companies looking to hire graduates, or who are willing to
take students as interns or on placement for experience then please
contact me as soon as possible so that I can compile a list and place
you in touch with Sean at the university who will be more than happy to
talk to you.
Current sponsors should speak to me immediately if they have not already
done so.
5. Volunteering on the day
As always I will require a group of people to help me on the day. I
already have some people but I need more. So please email me if you can
help, I will need people to time talks, check videos and place leaflets
and banners up before the conference and help manage the minutiae of
organisation. At this time I have:
Registration/Organisation: Steve Sexton, Chris Jackson and Leigh Keating
doing shifts on Registration for the day
Videos: Mike Whitaker (helping organise but he will also be speaking) -
I have 3 video cameras and would like to have 2 more, preferably digital
so I can grab the footage on the day or soon after - I would like to
bring as few tripods as possible, who has the ability to provide more
and will help Mike and I on the day.
Setting up: Me, t0m, at this moment, so who will join myself and Sean
from 8-ish on the morning of the conference for the mad setup rush.
Lightning Talks: I hate to volunteer him but I will be expecting the
magnificent Leon to help with this again.
I look forward to hearing from you all
6. New to Perl or use another language
If you are new to the Perl language, or are a practitioner of another
programming language then we would love to welcome you to the London
Perl Workshop this year. The LPW is a free event, and when we say "free'
we do mean "free as in Beer". There are: free attendance, free sponsor
goodies, free coffee/cakes in the morning, free buffet lunch, free
presentations by world-renowned speakers and new speakers, free
workshops and then free beer (usually 1-3+ rounds dependent on number of
attendees) and food at the social event after the conference.
We would also like to welcome those of you taking your first steps into
the higher languages and to programming, come along to a conference that
embraces newbies, be prepared for spirited debate and to have your
understanding stretched, but in a friendly way with a beer and a cake of
choice .
The reason we would especially like to welcome you this year (you are
welcome any time) is that there is a glut of companies in the Perlverse
seeking new programmers, some of these companies seek experienced Perl
personnel, but many of them also seek experienced polyglot programmers
as experience of more than one language brings benefits and they have on
the job training where you can use your existing skills while learning
new ones, there are also companies seeking graduates and have graduate
internship programs so this is the right time to brush up your skills in
Perl and see what has changed, and trust me a lot has. So take the
plunge, at the very least you can see some of the new things in a
rival/new language and get a free drink.
Visit: http://shadowc.at/pvDXop and register today .
-mdk
--
Mark Keating BA (Hons), Writer, Photographer, Cat-Herder.
Managing Director: http://www.shadow.cat
For more that I do visit: http://www.mdk.me